The first congressman to battle the NSA is dead. No one noticed, no one cares. (Mark Ames 2-4-14

[Octafish]

15. The Lost Legacy of Otis Pike

Former Rep. Otis Pike died Monday at the age of 92, stirring recollections of his courageous efforts in the 1970s to expose abuses committed by the CIA, a struggle that ultimately bogged down as defenders of state secrecy proved too strong, as ex-CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman writes.

By Melvin A. Goodman
ConsortiumNews, January 22, 2014

EXCERPT...

The Pike Committee also recommended the creation of a statutory Inspector General for the intelligence community, but this proposal was considered too radical at the time. In the wake of the Iran-Contra disaster, the idea of a statutory IG was revived, but CIA Director William Webster was opposed because he believed that such an office would interfere with operational activities. Senate intelligence Committee Chairman David Boren, D-Oklahoma, also was opposed because he thought the office of an IG would be a rival to his committee. Fortunately, two key members of the intelligence committee, John Glenn, D-Ohio, and Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, believed that a statutory IG was essential, and Boren had to give in.

The CIA’s Office of the IG operated effectively until recently, when the Obama administration inexplicably moved to weaken the IGs throughout the intelligence community, particularly in the CIA. The current chairman of the congressional intelligence committees, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, and Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Michigan, apparently do not understand the importance of a fully engaged IG to their own efforts to conduct genuine oversight.

The Pike Committee understood that CIA’s role in the FBI’s counterintelligence programs (COINTELPRO) was particularly intolerable in a democratic society, and that the political operations conducted by the CIA were in violation of its charter, which prohibited the Agency from conducting domestic operations.

The programs that CIA Director Richard Helms had denied not only existed, but they were extensive and illegal. President Gerald Ford’s senior advisers, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, encouraged the President to established the Rockefeller Commission to examine the CIA in an attempt to derail both the Church and Pike Commissions and thus obfuscate many of the efforts to disrupt the lawful activities of Americans advocating social change from 1956 to 1971.

Unfortunately, little of the Pike Committee’s work in these areas was known to the public because most of its hearings were closed and its final report was ultimately suppressed. Today, the NSA is conducting domestic surveillance in violation of its charter with no serious response from the chairmen of the intelligence committees.

Rep. Pike made a special effort to give the Government Accountability Office the authority to investigate and audit the intelligence community, particularly the CIA. But the GAO needs authorization from Congress to begin an investigation, and the oversight committees have been particularly quiet about genuine oversight since the intelligence failures that accompanied the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Rep. Pike and Sen. Church were junkyard dogs when it came to conducting oversight; the current chairmen are advocates for the intelligence community and lapdogs when it comes to monitoring the CIA.

The sad lesson in all of these matters, particularly the work of the Pike Committee, was that Congress tried to conduct serious reform in the wake of abuses during the Vietnam War as it did in the wake of the Iran-Contra scandal, but its legacy has been lost.

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http://consortiumnews.com/2014/01/22/the-lost-legacy-of-otis-pike/